Today we read the press release about the decision of the Court of Justice on the Case C-311/18 by which it has been invalided the Decision 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Data Protection Shield.
That decision is complex, and it needs to be examined carefully, point by point.
Transfers of personal data to third countries or international organisations are a very crucial topic that has to be addressed soon by the European Commission both for a new adequacy decision and anyway for new standard contractual clauses.
Times changed.
Furthermore, the current standard contractual clauses should be revised because they are no longer suitable for our time. I had the opportunity to provide first comments the Case C-311/18 (Data Protection Commissioner v Facebook Ireland and Maximillian Schrems) since 2018 when I had my lectures on “transfers of personal data to third countries or international organisations” in a course for Data Protection Officer organised by the Consiglio Nazionale Forense (Italian National Bar Association).
I also had the same opportunity to propose my point of view again even on several other occasions (recently also in my last book which will be soon available in a new edition in Italian and English). Notably, the discussion was even more very interesting after having read the content of the reference for a preliminary ruling from the High Court and the Opinion of the Advocate General (request for a preliminary ruling from the High Court).
In those documents there several relevant points to deepen. People who participated in that course, probably, will remember my forecast about a possible decision by which the Court of Justice would have invalidated the Decision 2016/1250 on the adequacy of the protection provided by the EU-US Data Protection Shield and consequently the standard contractual clauses into force or the needing to revise them. Currently, the Court of Justice invalidates only the adequacy Decision 2016/1250 - Data Protection Shield, but we hope to read about new standard contractual clauses.
That’s happened. Hopefully, we wait for good news soon.